Santorum gets boost in Obama's back yard

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum today got a boost in Barack Obama’s back yard in his pursuit of the GOP nomination for president.

It comes from Steve Baer, a former candidate for governor in Illinois and the chief of the United Republican Fund of Illinois.

“Santorum is by far the GOP’s best hope for rebuilding the Reagan coalition for victories this fall,” Baer said.

As a libertarian-leaning conservative he collected 34 percent of the vote in the 1990 Illinois gubernatorial primary against Jim Edgar, the eventual governor.

Baer also announced the launch of a campaign for millions of calls, emails and video-laden text messages in Illinois to support Santorum.

“I’m backing Santorum because over recent months, he’s proven a real willingness to forsake the kind of big government outlook which still characterizes most Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill,” said Baer, who today is an investor involved in film, humanitarian and philanthropic projects.

“He blows away Romney and Newt Gingrich as a conservative. Those two have favored CO2 regulation, forced insurance purchasing and TARP bailouts. Romney signed ‘Gay Youth Pride Day’ proclamations and supports the so-called ENDA law, making it illegal to fire a man who wears a dress and lipstick to work, even if he’s your kids’ kindergarten teacher.”

Baer said, “The biggest change we’ve seen is Rick now showing the brass to go for about $1 trillion in cuts against our debt-inflating federal budget – Ron Paul-scale downsizing. We’ve obtained private scoring of Rick’s economic plan by a former top government economist, and it shows federal spending as a percentage of GDP dropping below 15 percent from the current 25 percent.”

He also said Santorum’s Catholic faith seems to help him admit where he was wrong in the past, to repent of it and to then do the right thing going forward.

Another supporter, Cary Gordon, a Sioux City, Iowa, pastor, said, “Rick simply would not have won the Iowa caucuses had it not been for a few men like Foster Friess and Steve Baer.”